Housing Tenure Transitions Of Older Households: Life Cycle, Demographic, And Familial Factors

Understanding the housing choices of the older households will grow in importance as the baby boom generation starts to retire. This proposed analysis utilizes a rich longitudinal data set (PSID) to provide insight into the reasons that older households leave homeownership to become renters. Because of the richness of the data, this analysis is able to control for life transitions, a household's income and wealth, and connection to one's children in predicting when a homeowner will become a renter. The results have important implications for the life cycle hypotheses and the relationship between bequest motivated savings and housing tenure choice.